Awarded at the Cannes Festival, member of the Cannes Film Week in Buenos Aires (it was shown on Wednesday) and awarded as the best film of the year by Fipresci, the federation of international critics, Autumn leaves It is a comedy like few others.
It had been six years since Aki Kaurismäki He was not making a film, and he returned to directing as he directed and as he always directed. His style in terms of his characters, the furniture, those interiors that always, but always seem from the ’60s, the colors, the silences, everything is kept as is.
Ansa, the female protagonist, listens to the news about the war in Ukraine by tuning into an old transistor radio. The table is old, it seems that we are 50 or 60 years ago, but an almanac puts us in the present, which is not even this year, but 2024.
Kaurismäki’s characters are lonely, they tend to do poorly financially and live in precarious situations.
Autumn leaves It thus resembles many previous achievements by the director of The man without a past y El Havre.
If copying yourself is style, the Finnish director (younger brother of Kika Kaurismäki, also a filmmaker) is a stylist in its purest form.
The good thing about Aki’s films is that we also always, but always find endearing characters, proletarians who are left without work, and their love stories are captivating because they happen naturally.
It is a story of two lost souls who, perhaps, had never felt loved or found someone to love.
Ansa (Alma Pöysti) and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) don’t have it easy. And if there is always a hole for a hole, as our grandmothers would say, Ansa and Holappa are perfect for each other. Not only does he have in common that they get fired from his successive jobs -OK, him for being a drinker who knows no limits even in his work schedule-.
He is a worker in a factory, who smokes while sitting under a sign that says no smoking. And, as we noted, he drinks secretly. Ansa was employed in a supermarket, as a stocker. But they discover that she was taking food that was expired, which should have been in the trash.
Each one will find a new job, and they will find themselves by chance one night in a somewhat gray, monotonous Helsinki, in which the main entertainment of its inhabitants seems to be going to a karaoke bar.
Autumn leaves It is a cinephile comedy like the ones Kaurismäki usually makes.
Melancholic and sensitive, the director will make them cross paths and coincidences and bad luck will come together when Holappa loses the piece of paper with the phone number of the woman whose name he doesn’t even know. He does it at the door of the cinema they went to see The Dead Don’t Crya zombie one, by Jim Jarmusch, and Kaurismäki’s humorous ones are the order of the day, with tributes to Bresson and Godard.
It’s not easy to make a comedy – which some will find deadpan – that has heart. It is, in practice, a film without a single facial expression, except for a couple of smiles, just at the end.
But it’s still a comedy.
Finally, Kaurismäki is passionate about Argentina, in particular the city of Buenos Aires, and tango. A scene takes place in a bar, whose sign is enormous and reads Buenos Aires. And if there are no mentions of Diego Maradona, like other times, on the soundtrack you can hear bitter suburbby Alfredo Le Pera, in the voice of his other composer, Carlos Gardel. Regular visitor to our country, I hope to return soon.
Dramatic comedy. Finland / Germany, 2023. Original title: “Dead leaves” o “Fallen Leaves”. 81′, SAM 13. Of: Aki Kaurismäki. Con: Alma Pöysti, Jussi Vatanen, Marti Suosalo, Nuppu Koivo. Salas: Cinépolis Recoleta, Houssay and Pilar, Cinemark Palermo, Showcase Belgrano and Norcenter.